I love social media and I love tennis, so for two weeks my algorithm has been serving up outrage after outrage about the influencers who’ve invaded the U.S. Open.
This year’s Open already seemed to be the nadir for an experience that’s been going downhill for awhile. First, there’s the increasingly exorbitant prices, then the horror expressed by luxury suite ticket holders that they no longer had private bathrooms thanks to renovations at Arthur Ashe Stadium. Most outrage-inducing, however, has been the influx of influencers: Social media stars courted and invited by the tournament’s organizers expressly to expand the audience for the tournament, but who’ve seemingly been more invested in getting likes than in promoting the tennis version of love.
Many people have commented on how the influencer’s high jinks are at odds with tennis’s vision of itself as a serious, sophisticated and genteel sport. But the problem with these invaders isn’t that they detract from the solemnity of tennis. It’s that they’re distracting from the raucous on-court antics, celebrity glamour and glorious chaos that traditionally typifies the action at Flushing Meadows.
One group of influencers went viral, probably not the way they intended, during Naomi Osaka’s opening night match when the choreographed movements they were performing and filming in their luxury box led to their being chided publicly by the chair umpire. Another would-be social media star was admonished online for using a ring light while taking a photograph in the stands during match play. In the wake of the U.S. Open fiasco, Wimbledon confirmed it would not be courting influencers next year, as its current rules prohibit the use of technology “in a manner which inconveniences or unreasonably disrupts any other attendees including spectators or players.”
To be clear, as a tennis aficionado who has attended probably 20 U.S. Open tournaments over the years, I’ve been horrified by the influencers’ antics. But I’ve also watched enough tennis at Arthur Ashe to know it’s always played host to boorish and outlandish behavior. Remember the actual fight in the stands? What about the woman in the crowd at a U.S. Open match who revealed herself to be a champion beer chugger when she was featured on a big screen? Despite tennis’s reputation as a gentle person’s game, New York fans are always quick to give a Bronx cheer (even while in Queens). Outraged spectators lustily booed the chair umpire after Ms. Osaka upset Serena Williams in the contentious 2018 women’s finals.
That’s simply what’s transpired in the stands. Now let’s talk about what’s happened on the court. I was in attendance when Ms. Williams, playing against Kim Clijsters, was called for a foot fault during a pivotal comeback moment, and what came next — including shouted expletives and a threat to shove a tennis ball down a certain lineswoman’s throat — is part of tennis history. The U.S. Open is also where Irina Spîrlea seemed to intentionally bump a teenage Venus Williams while changing ends in 1997, and where Novak Djokovic was disqualified in the early rounds in 2020 after swatting a ball in anger and unwittingly hitting a line judge in the throat. Even the typically unflappable Roger Federer lost his cool at the Open: he let an expletive fly as he got rattled during his eventual loss to Juan Martín del Potro in 2009.
No wonder the U.S. Open often feels like tennis’s hard-partying outpost gone wild: Thanks to ever later starting matches, the place gets especially lively after dark — some of the most memorable points and boisterous moments have happened in the wee hours of the morning. Ben Shelton recently vanquished Carlos Alcaraz in their quarterfinal match at 3:33 a.m., the latest finish in the Open’s history, with thousands still in the stadium.
And who needs tawdry influencers when your tournament already draws the best, or at least the most, celebrities in tennis? The U.S. Open has reliably attracted icons from Aretha Franklin to Beyoncé and Jay-Z, from Anna Wintour in her sunglasses to Timothée Chalamet and Kylie Jenner, putting on a PDA show three years ago.
That’s the influencers biggest transgression: not that they’re stealing attention from the action but that they’re not paying attention to it. Tennis is all about engaging in the moment, following the action on the court and in the stands, not making moments for online engagement.
We tennis fans can tolerate, and even celebrate, obnoxious behavior at Flushing Meadows. But for goodness sake, it has to at least involve tennis.
Nekesa Mumbi Moody is a former co-editor in chief of The Hollywood Reporter.
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